


Gossamer

by De Orakle (Delphi)



Series: Kinds of Magic [2]
Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Backstory, Drama, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-08-01
Updated: 2000-08-01
Packaged: 2017-10-12 05:09:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/De%20Orakle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Locked away in Dumbledore's rooms, Severus reflects on what brought him to this point in life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gossamer

**Author's Note:**

> Exact date of publication unknown.

There's magic in this room, and Severus Snape can see it.

It runs in rivulets along the floor; it pools in the pores of the stone walls. It has coated the desk, and scrolls correct themselves grammatically; hidden drawers demand the proper tickle to show themselves to the naked eye. On the grandiose four-poster, magic has woven itself into the blankets, knit and purl loopholes stitching themselves into the fabric of time. Dumbledore seemingly never has to worry over how many m's there are in "tomorrow," and the bed has settled itself comfortably two hours behind the rest of the room.

Of course, Severus finds no amusement in these parlour tricks, but there is a neat little cluster of grey matter in him where the magic brews, and the reptile that sleeps under it has coiled around the petty spells in comfort.

Wizard-born and Hogwarts-taught, it's an absentminded comfort to deconstruct the elements of each spell, piecing together the words that gave them form. He's done it...he can't recall how many times in these past three afternoons of keeping his own company in Dumbledore's room. It's an undemanding distraction that lets him think and not think all at once.

Wall to wall, the room is crisscrossed with gossamer of silver and gold, though Severus can only see it when he reaches out with his mind and squints just right. He's curled up in the seat of the room's sole window, safely centred in the largest gap in the mesh of magic, idly tracing the length of two spells, _agnoscit_ and _tepidarium_. They run parallel through the space that's not quite distance. They twine, separate, and then disappear into a web as fragile and as strong as any spider's.

He rests his face against the windowpane, wishing he had a wand with which to add a strand of his own to that complex network. He knows his own is gone, and he's blearily certain that he doesn't want it back. The latter tastes wrong to him. He frowns, recalling a wet and rotting smell, but the memory slips through his fingers when he tries to lay hands upon it.

Rather, he finds himself flipping through the card catalogue of his mind and stopping at the summer he spent with his father's Squib sister and her lot in Essex. He'd hated his aunt, and he'd hated his uncle, and he'd hated his cousin and their cats and their house that reeked of pine-scented cleaner. But it was during that summer when a young Severus had first glimpsed the glint and gleams of a spell and learned how one properly cast could stretch out as taut and strong as a tightrope.

How old had he been...?

He twirls and tugs at a lock of his hair, squinting as though he might peer through the mists of time. His eyes widen an instant, a little startled to realise that it must have been only a few weeks after his father's death, and a few more before they took his mother away. He scowls again at his treacherous memory that thinks it knows what's best for him.

His mouth quirks downward, and he drums an offbeat rhythm against the windowpane. God, how miserable he'd been that summer. The Parkers had been his only relations willing to take him in at the time, and the rest of the relieved family had gushed over how fun it would be for Severus to stay with a boy his own age.

He can barely even recall the cousin's name now...John, maybe...no, it was _Joel_. A boy even skinnier and paler than Severus was, and fire and brimstone, how Severus had hated him.

Joel had never been suicidal enough to refute his strange cousin's claim to wizardry, but had always remained frustratingly unimpressed by Severus' small magics, offering up "rational" explanations for their harmless firecracker effects.

Rational...that was Joel, and very technical as well, spending most of the summer at his desk with an old wireless and a slotted screwdriver that had often tempted Severus with how neatly it might fit between Joel's ribs.

It's Joel's back he remembers the best: the shoulder blades sticking out like stubby wings under a singlet as the Muggle boy assembled and disassembled a tangle of wires and circuit board. Severus can still almost recall the feel of his cot beneath him—the mattress sagging where one beam had broken—as he'd cast a child's attempt at a _lumos_ spell, summoning the little blue sphere of light into the palm of his hand, then closing his fist around it. Again, and again, and again, to the clink of tiny metal screws hitting the desk.

Over those summer weeks, the light had become gradually brighter in his hand, and each time he'd conjured, the memories would come—his father's late night magic lessons in the study, just the two of them bent over dusty books at that grand old desk—and Severus had then taught himself how not to cry.

It had been mid-August of that summer when he finally saw it. He can't recall whether he was young enough to be surprised at the silvery-blue threads appearing twined between his fingers—no, not even appearing, it was more as if he'd suddenly realised that they had always been there. He had blinked and lost them briefly, panicked, then focused in again on the strands of light and magic.

That had been his lifeline that summer. Each day he would call up the handful of proper spells he knew and, rather than casting them, held them close to his body and dissected them strand by strand. He practised after dinner while Joel tinkered about with his precious wireless and long into the night with the raw, slow-burning power so easily drawn by the young and angry.

Young as he had been then, he'd cherished that sudden gift, knowing that magic was all he had left of his father. Perhaps even suspecting that his talents ran stronger than the average wizard's, despite his mixed blood. Oh, how his future had resembled his spellwork then, all bright and shining, twisting out of sight before him.

He's come to take it for granted now, like everything else he once took pride in. He gazes into the torn remains of a spell overhanging the door like a cobweb someone has taken a broom to. It's been hastily broken, shifting in and out of perspective. It's a dull grey. Dead, with the gritty look of a protective ward.

He presses his tongue against his gnawed and bleeding lip. It's cold and bloody and painfully sensitive in a way that he can't help touching again. There are memories like that too: the dark pleasure of being hooded and masked, the promise of power, and the unreal hardness of dead flesh in his grip. He touches them briefly to make himself hurt.

With an insubstantial touch, he backtracks over the tail end of a _flamma_ spell that's stuck to the corners of the fireplace. There's the sticky glow of a charm around the hearth, maybe a bar against visitors. Or escapees. He's followed them all, these elementary magics that he knows as unquestionably as the arithmantic table.

Boredom though, has not yet won out over the tatters that remain of his good sense. There are other spells here, and they brush the edges of his mind as if feeling slighted by the attention he pays their simpler brothers. Impressed and intrigued as he can't help but be, Severus doesn't dare touch them. They're an eldritch few, seemingly random strands of magic that shudder and shiver in an imperceptible breeze out of the corner of his eye. They reek of Dumbledore, and the red and gold of them pulses, tied to the old man's blood. The thought of them gnaws at him, not in how they might be shaping reality, but in the power they implicate in their caster.

He wonders if Dumbledore is going to kill him.

The winter presses against his cheek through the windowpane. The numbness is soothing, and the view spirals so far down that Severus knows he must be in the western-most tower. Barely visible against the purely driven snow below, little silver sprites flit around a tall black elm that Severus has never seen before on Hogwarts' grounds. One just like it, though perhaps not so gnarled, grew in the backyard of his childhood home, and witches had once been hanged from it, the locals said. The window doesn't open.

They must have found the body by now, Severus thinks. The webbing that bound the illusion of skull and serpent to the clouds was a twisting sort—coiling, calling eyes to behold it.

Behold it, behold it...The phrase sounds too familiar, and what might he have let slip while he was feverish and dying? There's nothing but grey fog between the memories of then and now.

He swallows dryly. Dumbledore has had nothing but pleasant and gentle words for him, and very soft touches to Severus's back, and that is more frightening than any threat.

The hair bristles along the back of his neck, and Severus scratches until the skin flakes off under his fingernails. He thinks of his old dog, Toby. A great black Trollhound who died when Severus was six. Severus's last words to Toby had been very kind, as pleasant and gentle as Dumbledore's, and then he'd watched him die. He remembers telling Toby what a good dog he was, what a brave boy. He remembers plugging his little ears as Father had cast the spell that Severus had been told he mustn't listen to. A spell his father had said would snuff out the part of Toby that was Toby. Wouldn't hurt a bit.

It had been two weeks prior to that when young Severus had gone around to the kennel to find it empty. That day had been spent walking up and down the road, clutching his father's hand while his imagination tortured him with scenes of Toby dead in a set of lorry tracks. He'd been so small that he'd had to kneel on the chesterfield for his hopeful picture-window vigil each night.

Of course he had been overjoyed when Toby finally came home. Despite the talk his father had sat him down for, Severus had still prayed each night for his dog's safe return, and those prayers had seemed answered when the big bear of a canine came weaving his way down the hill into the garden where Severus was playing. It had taken him a moment to realise what was wrong. Toby never walked anywhere if he could run, and that morning the dog had been staggering, almost tripping over his paws.

Severus had been on his feet in an instant, and if his father hadn't been watching from the window, he might very well have died that day. Instead, there had been shouting—a huge adult hand gripping a little boy's arm and dragging him into the house so suddenly and roughly that the boy began to cry.

Trollhound Madness, Severus would later learn. Contracted from one of Toby's wild brothers in the forest that bordered the house. A feral fearlessness of men, an irresistible urge to join the pack's hunt at the alpha's call. The only cure was euthanasia. That was Toby's reward for a lifetime of gentle loyalty. Father had put Severus, crying, away in his room. Told him to count to one hundred.

His memory skips then like a record to Toby tethered to the old elm tree with a leash that wasn't quite there. He'd tire himself out, Severus's father had said. Toby had strained at his invisible bonds, growling with a muzzle full of spittle, his big brown eyes glowing red.

And worse, every once in a while the dog would stop his thrashing and look right at Severus through the window. He would whimper that deep throaty sound like when he was begging for a biscuit and Severus would call him a Big Silly.

Another record-skip to Severus and his father with blistered hands and Toby lying buried under the elm. They told Mother that Toby had gone rabid.

Severus thinks he knows now, what spell his father cast.

He tenses another notch, holding his breath. Footsteps in the hallway, seemingly from a quarter-league away, though three more steps should bring their owner to the door. A creak—the sound of tired oak and dry metal hinges comes a breath before the doorknob turns. Time is elastic here, stretched until it's forced into flight.

He presses his fingertips to the windowpane, leaving greasy prints. Outside, one snow sprite rises higher than her sisters, twining through the highest boughs of the elm tree. Severus finds the view to be pretty enough in a gaudy way, the sort of prettiness that once used to enrage him with its obvious contrivance. Like those "Precious Grimoire" figurines his grandmother collected, little statues of toddlers in over-sized robes, hats falling over disgustingly wide eyes.

Lava burns in his belly. He doesn't turn around when he hears his name.

He closes his eyes and pretends he's dead.

"Severus?" Dumbledore says again.

Severus bites into his lip, reopening wounds. He hates the way Dumbledore says his name, so mildly, stripping it of its meaning, its power, trying to shape it into something soft.

And he hates that now, as in the two days past, Dumbledore sounds surprised to see him. As if the last thing he expected to find upon his return was a man looking every bit the young Muggle in his t-shirt and dungarees, lounging about his private rooms. Maybe he is. It's common knowledge that the old man isn't quite all there, though where else he might be is something that Severus has often wondered.

He breathes hotly against the windowpane and watches the glass fog. With his fingernail, he etches a complicated compilation of gibberish runes.

There's a rustle followed by much bustling, the sound of Dumbledore unpacking that worn dragonhide satchel of his that's stuffed fat with parchment. Blank parchment. "Paperwork," Dumbledore said with a straight face and twinkling eye when Severus raised an eyebrow in query that morning.

The shuffling of paper, and a jarring sound that jerks Severus's shoulder blades together. A drawer clunks open.

Severus holds his breath.

Surely Dumbledore must know that Severus has been through his things again today. Severus has been careful of course; common room legend claims that Hogwarts is set with mousetrap spells that turn snooping students to rodents. In fact, Severus has been careful to the point of paranoia because these are, after all, the private rooms of the second most powerful wizard he knows. With those cock-eyed spells he's sensed, the hex might not even hit until he's two weeks older and two towns over.

It's a stupid risk, but he's long since become addicted to the safe intimacy that comes with reading someone else's correspondence, in browsing over what books they keep closest to their bed and what photographs they've held onto over the years.

What rankles him the most is that Dumbledore might very well have given him permission to look around, had he asked. Another drawer opens, sliding smoothly. That would be the drawer on the bedside table, the only one that doesn't stick. Dumbledore keeps a bag of Jeannie Djinn's Liquorice Lamps in there, and a black and white photograph from which Dumbledore himself winks, unmistakable though unbelievably young and strangely garbed, his arm around a pretty woman in a old-fashioned frock. And a medallion, incomprehensibly for "Most Improved Player," issued by the St. Bartholomew's Men's Bowling League, 1958.

Severus turns his head slightly, an obscure joint in his neck popping in complaint. From nightstand to desk to wardrobe, Dumbledore flits about like his namesake, and suddenly Severus feels very cold, though a flush burns in his cheeks. He can't shake the feeling that while he's been watching Dumbledore from the corner of his eye, Dumbledore has been doing the same.

The bed springs squeak as if a pack of disgruntled mice live under the mattress, though in fact all that resides there is a dog-eared copy of _The Hobbit_.

The old man's eyes are on him so strongly that Severus swears he can trace their path. Across, across, and down, maybe reading the concert dates written on the back of his t-shirt. He hears Dumbledore swallow; wonders briefly at the dry sound of it. With a calm sort of dread, Severus realises that this must be it. Dumbledore has gathered some final bit of evidence and now he means to garner a confession or maybe some screams before he exacts whatever revenge he's plotting behind those twinkling eyes.

His mind flashes on his father approaching Toby, arms open, telling him what a good hound he was, how brave a pup he was.

Dumbledore opens his mouth to speak. Severus can hear it. Dumbledore is going to ask him why. Dumbledore is going to softly say the name of the one whom Severus can only think of as "the body." Dumbledore might even draw his wand and say that—that excruciating word whose mere imagined utterance makes Severus's jaw twitch helplessly.

"Severus..."

Biting down on the inside of his cheek...

"...how are you feeling?"

...he tastes blood.

"Will they take me to Azkaban?" Severus blurts out before he can stop himself.

It sounds strange to him, his own voice: low and barely audible after the screaming and the silence. Not hoarse, because his tray of food and drink has replenished itself with milk and pumpkin juice each day, though his appetite has been spare. His voice sounds oily. Serpentine. He bites down again.

It's really the first time that the possibility of prison has consciously occurred to him; it's such a petty thing to fear in the face of eternal damnation. Azkaban may even be the safest place for him—should he arrive there alive—and he might have once found that funny. He knows quite a bit about the prison, having learned all he could about the Dementors in a fit of morbid interest during the circus of Alaric Alrecht's famous murder trial. He wonders now, with the memories that buzz about in his skull like wasps, does he have so much to lose to their kiss?

The soft sounds of slipper-clad feet, and Dumbledore is standing very warm and close behind him. He smells of book dust and lemon. Outside, the snow sprites continue their ignorant little dance.

"Severus. Divination is not my strong suit, but if you can tell me what happened, then I swear I will do everything in my power to keep you safe."

It doesn't sound like a lie, and that makes it all the more frightening. Dumbledore's hand settles lightly on his shoulder, warm even through his t-shirt. It squeezes gently at muscles too exhausted to unwind. Severus shrugs, but the old man doesn't take the hint, and Severus finds his jaw clenching against the terrible urge to strike out. Anger sparks inside of him, a childish fury that rallies against his sense of survival. It's been five days since it happened, and if he were just _punished_ , then he'd know what to—

A choked sob seizes his chest, and he smothers it with a cough, hiding his face against his knees. A warm touch brushes whisper-soft against the back of his neck. He shuts his stinging eyes tightly.

A high, keening whimper rises into the air, and a moment later he feels it in his throat.

Another squeeze to his shoulder, and fingers slide into his hair. A thumb strokes the nape of his neck. He shivers, and his stomach shudders in kind.

"I..."

He can remember the smell, and how those dead eyes had stared. He remembers the cold meat of her under his hands as he'd posed her body.

His throat clenches to fight down his roiling stomach. He remembers the laughter of the others.

"I..."

He coughs; an acrid burn scorches the back of his tongue. He remembers his own laughter too, nervous and shaky, teetering on the edge of hysteria.

The hands on his body are sure and strong, gripping him firmly as a hot wave of nausea threatens to sweep him away. His stomach jerks angrily, a fist thrusting it up towards his mouth.

He gags, and at the sound, Dumbledore's hands turn to steel, dragging Severus to his feet and towards the bathroom. Cool marble, and cool hands, and what feels like dragon spit boiling in his gut. Nothing to throw up, and that just makes it worse. His stomach is trying to force out the secrets that burn inside him.

Cool tile, and cool hands, and a cool wet cloth dragged shivery-sweet along his brow and the back of his neck.

Severus starts to weep.

The tears scorch his eyes and skin like salt in an open wound, and his stomach clenches again, urging him to sob. As if he could ever possibly purge himself of the filth inside.

With the back of his hand, he wipes clumsily at his eyes, his nose, his mouth. The water in the toilet is swirled with yellow and red.

Sitting back on his heels, he's goosefleshed and shivering. There are ducks on the walls, a cheery yellow and blue mosaic. They bob and swim in their little painted limbo, though no trace of magic lingers on the stone.

"Come, come."

No one should be that warm; he can feel Dumbledore's arm radiating heat around his middle. Severus' skin is crawling over his flesh, and he can't stop shivering as he staggers towards the bed.

The cool sheets feel like a little bit of heaven against his skin. Heaven, yes, fluffy clouds that smell of fresh air and envelop him like an old cloak. There had been sheets hanging in the yard at the little charmed cottage in the woods, for no snow would fall within a half-dozen yards from the house. Lucius had wiped his hands on one of them, leaving smudgy, gummed red. Blood, because Lucius had dug his nails into her breasts—

He shudders, a jerky, ugly little twitch. His conscience bashes itself against the inside of his head, battering until Severus stops pretending he's innocent. He draws his arms up close to his body and wishes he were dying faster.

"Severus..." That damned gentleness, as if Severus were something soft and skittish. "There was a murder discovered outside Leicester five days ago. I was consulted, due to the circumstances."

There's a crack in the wall, shaped like a lightning bolt.

"Her name was Mathilda Merrick. She was an archaeologist with the Ministry, and when her absence was noticed, one of her co-workers went to look in on her..."

Warm, warm strokes circling the small of his back.

"There was an apparuit illusion hovering above the house, a skull and serpent. The Dark Mark."

He pulls his arms up under his chest, scratching at the mark that is etched to the bone in blood and nightshade. He hasn't kept it covered. It cannot be blinded.

"The body was...Avada Kedavra had been used. But what puzzled investigators the most was how the perpetrators had gained entrance when Mathilda had such intricate wards in place."

Intricate, yes...blue and glowing.

"There was a trace of something the Aurors had never seen before, a potion they suspected the perpetrators may have taken to get in, but it wasn't anything they could quite identify. There was something I found familiar, though. Your fifth year independent study...?"

Dumbledore's hand keeps circling on his back. Severus is oddly, stupidly touched that the headmaster remembers his project.

"There was fear in that room, Severus, and not all of it was Mathilda's. Perhaps...you didn't intend for things to go so far."

Up and up, that hand kneads a soothing trail along his backbone. Up and up, and maybe he's going to weep again. Something wet and warm bubbles in the back of his throat.

"We—" He coughs and the bed springs whine in reply. "We were only supposed to ask her about an—an artefact at the Ministry. And she told us, she _told_ us, but then Lu—someone said that we couldn't just let her..."

The drying tears itch. He rubs his face against the mattress.

"We couldn't let her..."

He tries to force the words and can only scrape together a whisper. "I was only supposed to be there to let them in."

He'd stood in the doorway, and that—that cow had been too stupid to be afraid at first. And then they'd made her scream.

"I believe you."

He feels dirty inside, as if he's lied.

"These people you've fallen in with, Severus, no matter what oath you've sworn, we can find a way to get you out. If you're willing to tell us what you know, who else was involved. Malfoy and Sanguin, we know were—"

A sick gush of something cold and metallic in his stomach. Severus nearly teeters off the mattress trying to push himself up and away, because the lot of them aren't even supposed to know who each of the others are, and if they even suspect he's told Dumbledore, chewing up his own arm will be nothing but a fond memory.

"Severus, it's all right, it's all right..." His face is held fast in both of Dumbledore's hands, an awkward angle, but those blue eyes are so very calm.

It's all right. It's all right.

The pillow must be goose down; his nose itches, and he twitches it. His eyes are fixed on Dumbledore's knee, a safe neutrality of maroon velvet. His eyes hurt. Dumbledore touches his hair ever so softly.

"My dear boy, I know you have no great love for the Ministry, but..." Dumbledore's voice is hushed and padded, mindful of sharp edges, "...however did you ever get yourself involved with Voldemort?"

Anger needles its way into Severus's heart, because why shouldn't he ally himself with whomever he likes. He's Slytherin—he has the drive and the strength and—he's crying again.

He tries to take a clean breath and exhales a mad chuckle. And he means to say 'I don't know,' but instead hears "...I...I saw my mother, in London, you know. Did I ever tell you about my mother?" He's proud that his voice doesn't shake. He almost sounds as if he's in control.

"I'm familiar with your situation."

"I was heading for platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross station, and she..." His chest hitches in the kind of laugh that makes him feel as though his breastbone has shattered, "...she was walking right beside me.

"She had this little girl with her, Professor. A little girl with curly hair and blue eyes, just like her. And—and she must have felt me looking, because she looked back at me and..."

He falls silent, he falls and falls, and Dumbledore so patiently strokes the hair back from his temple.

"And nothing," he says.

Nothing. Over a decade and the _obliviate_ spell held strong. Very impressive, the Ministry and the clever little ways they made Muggles forget. His mother had seen the strange man staring at her child and pulled the little girl closer to her side. She had protected her child.

"Severus..." Dumbledore's hand stills a moment, radiating life and heat a hair's breadth away from Severus' skin. "I won't say that the Ministry did not do you a terrible injustice. But I did look into the matter when it first came to my attention, and I know that your mother just could not care for you after your father passed on. She couldn't cope with what you were, what you are."

How would she cope with what he has become, Severus wonders.

"There are fosterings now, but at the time...your mother wasn't a well woman, and—and that is no excuse." Dumbledore's voice becomes firm, irrefutable. "You were wronged, Severus, and there is no excuse for it. But there are ways to change the system. Legitimate ways that are open to a bright young man like yourself."

A heartbreakingly tender touch to his cheekbone.

"This doesn't have to be the end of things."

If only he could just stop crying, and if only Dumbledore weren't so goddamned gentle in rolling him onto his stomach and rubbing his shoulders. He just wants to melt into this bed forever, to let the tears and sheets and clemency swallow him whole.

The hand, up and under his t-shirt now, is warm and dry. It feels...indescribably strange, because Severus has had sex at least two score of times, but never since childhood has he felt such safe and terrible intimacy.

Maybe everything's going to be all right.

His tears have bled out, and his head and throat feel like the desert. He can almost feel the thaumaturgic charge between Dumbledore's skin and his own, a cool, wet quiver.

The contact suddenly breaks, and Severus makes a pathetic sound, but then Dumbledore's hand is on the back of his thigh. Very light and sweetly rhythmic over the patch where the denim has been worn white and smooth.

And that's when he feels himself getting hard.

He freezes. Clenches his fist and bites his lip. He tells himself it's just the sheer relief, and his age, and that no one has ever stroked his thigh before and he had no idea how good it would feel, but to no avail. Dumbledore strokes his waist and the tip of his hipbone. Severus shuts his eyes and thinks of Grubb's Third Equation.

The caress moves up to safe territory, and by the time Severus manages to calm himself down, there's nothing but warmth and rhythm, and a soft whisper that sparkles with magic. And when he has drifted into dreams, he's surrounded by humid darkness and the smell of lemons and—

— _pain_! He jolts awake knowing only pain. Oh god, such pain. Poison, burning bright in his blood. The last vestiges of dream slip away, and he claws after them, trying to pull them close to wrap around himself again.

No. Please, no.

He holds his left arm to his chest, trying to shield the room from it. Beside him, Dumbledore snores loudly, and it's such an absurd thing to which to anchor his sanity.

He can feel the call tugging at him like fishhooks in his fingertips. Fight it, he can fight it. He'll cut off his damned arm if need be.

But it pulls at him, burning him like a cattle brand. He knows they'll track him down. What if Dumbledore can't keep them out? They'll kill Severus, and they'll kill Dumbledore and the teachers, and they'll kill the children.

The mark is at its brightest now, lighting up the darkness like hot coals. And the anger is still there, lurking under the terror and the sickness. It cuts through the assuaging sleep. No matter how good the bed and its warm occupant feel, the anger is still as much a part of him as ever. Maybe it took over as a faithful companion when Toby died, the rage that's always given him his strength.

Nothing's changed, except for maybe everything.

He squirms out from under the blankets one inch at a time, keeping careful count of Dumbledore's deep breathing. He makes it to his feet, standing at the bedside. He hides his forearm under his shirt, and it burns against his chest.

The heat is nearly unbearable, and still Severus hesitates, some part of him hoping that Dumbledore will wake and stop him. Make things all right. But the headmaster's face is serene and still, sleeping the sleep of the just. He doesn't even stir as Severus steps backwards towards the door.

Severus would make some empty gesture, maybe whisper his farewell, but he's never been one for such melodrama. He can never quite bring himself to believe that anyone is watching.

He eyes the torn ward in the corner by the door. It shifts in and out of his sight, disabled and fading. It feels his interest and shimmers briefly like the air on a hot summer's day before returning to its mock-gallows.

The darkened hallways of Hogwarts unfold in his mind's eye, offering in a conspiratorial murmur to share his secrets.

He remembers, suddenly, watching Toby through the living-room window, wincing each time the mad dog choked himself, straining at his leash. Severus had been tempted then, so very tempted to sneak outside and set the dog free to run with his pack. It might still have lost him his pet forever, and his father's trust, and maybe his own life as well. Silly, simple Toby would have hunted with his wild brothers, done murder. But how Severus had been tempted.

That's just the sort of boy he was.


End file.
